The Best View In Town
by LithiumDoll
Summary: Steve's trailing Bucky, Natasha and Sam are trailing Steve. The CIA agents on the next roof are regretting their life choices.


For Mitchy, who prompted, "Widow and Falcon have to do some Spy stuff and they discuss Steve's mental state re: Bucky.?"  
This is a WIP, because of course it is *facepalm* May or may not include twine and/or languishing as it goes on.  
Beta: Thank you, Doccy!  
Feedback: Lovely, thank you!

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"Guess she didn't pan out either." Sam lowered his head behind the rooftop's ornate parapet, unsure if he was amused or disappointed. Didn't see why he couldn't be both.

Steve had snuck out at 0500 – like a 24-hour Cap-watch hadn't been in place since he'd talked his way out of hospital a week early – and then spent most of the day visiting homes and city parks. Sam and Natasha had trailed him, watching his back and occasionally waving to the CIA agents on the next roof.

Natasha seemed to make them nervous.

"That makes four, if you're counting," Sam added conversationally when Natasha didn't reply. He glanced at her; she was still watching the scene below them, barely blinking.

He darted another look, on the off-chance Brooklyn's retirement community was a Hydra front.

Steve was leaving the park with his head down and baseball cap pulled low. His hands were buried in the pockets of his jacket and, aside from the inches he had over most of the other foot traffic, at first glance he was just another man on the street.

The elderly woman he'd been crouched next to, talking with, watched him go. The lines of her face were creased in concern. Maybe pity.

Sam lowered himself again. Natasha seemed to have decided that it was appropriate to continue surveillance, so he rolled onto his back and raised a hand against the glare of the sun. "Next time we do this, I'm bringing a cooler and beer," he announced. "It's too damn hot. Hey, is that Elvis?"

"No," she said flatly. "The King is dead. You want to see the file?"

"You _were_ listening." He dropped a hand over his heart. "I'm touched."

"You're hard to ignore." She smirked faintly.

He laughed under his breath. No way in hell he was engaging over that ground; she'd shoot him down whatever he said.

"So here's a question," Natasha mused a few minutes later, when he'd completely failed to provide a moving target.

Sam waited. Waited a little more. "Wings," he prompted, finally. "I got wings, a great sense of humor and I'm a hell of a cook, but I'm not a mind-reader."

Her shoulders tightened as if she'd seen something, but before he could pull himself back up, she'd relaxed again. "That's not what the people in your support groups say."

He stilled, smile fading; she went on, impervious. "They say you really get it. Them."

"Yeah - that's not okay."

She looked down, one eyebrow quirked just so.

"I'm serious. You got questions about me, you ask _me. _Steal whatever files you want, but the groups are off limits. They've got enough shit to deal with, they don't need you messing with them just to quadruple-check some facts."

The thing he was learning about Natasha was, when she was trying for something real – when she was trying to figure out what _was_ real – there was this moment, this pause where she worked it out. So when her expression cleared before she grudgingly nodded he figured it was, if not a promise, something like an acknowledgement.

That or she knew he knew and was playing him.

Really not impossible, but he'd decided when Steve had dragged him into the Spooks crap that he wasn't going to play: he'd take them as he saw them and they could go ahead and return the favor.

"They never even knew I was there. I just listened," Natasha said after a beat. "I wouldn't do that. If I didn't have to."

"You went to a meeting?"

"No."

He grunted. "Maybe you should."

"Probably," she agreed coolly. "I could tell them about the time I killed the President of a second-world country with a butter knife. But then I'd have to kill everyone, so…"

"Funny."

"Not really." She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. "Don't."

He sat up, widened his eyes to impossible levels of innocence and grinned. "What?"

"Rogers is the mission," she said crisply. "Not me."

"Maybe I'm just enjoying the view." He shrugged. "It's scenic."

"And hot." She nodded. "You already said."

"Yes, I did," he agreed, and raised his head back over the parapet. Figuratively and, you know. Literally. "So what's the question?"

"Where did Rogers go?"

There was a quiet cough from behind them.

Natasha sighed and twisted, looking back. "When did you spot us?"

"I didn't." Steve shrugged and ambled to a stop a few feet away. "I just worked out the best vantage point and thought I'd drop by. Say 'hi.'"

Sam climbed to his feet, taking the time to stow his binocs away and grab his bag. "On the plus side, at least we all agree where the best high ground is."

"Uh huh." Steve nodded. "So is Brooklyn harboring any threats to freedom, democracy and the American way I should know about?"

"Any more than usual?" Sam shook his head. "Nah."

"We aren't watching you," Natasha said, standing. "We're watching the agents watching you."

"Right." Steve raised a hand and, without looking, waved at the next roof over. "They'll be a while following us this time. Apparently, someone barred the roof access from the inside."

Natasha's mouth twitched before a scowl overwrote the amusement. "We agreed to help you track down – find – Barnes. Why are you running an op without us?"

"I wasn't running an op, Tasha. I was visiting friends. Bucky's friends," Steve amended, almost absently, like an old habit.

He sounded frustrated, Sam thought. And tired. And guilty. Captain America might be the world's greatest soldier, but the operative word was _soldier_ and when it came down to it, in a few very specific ways, soldiers were the same.

"Did they give you anything," Natasha asked.

"Old friends, huh? How did that go?" Sam asked in the same breath.

They eyed each other. "I'm concerned about your mental health as well," Natasha said after a beat, almost challengingly.

"Thank you?" Steve hazarded.

"That's not what I meant." She crossed her arms. "You know I'm better at other kinds of support."

"You're a good friend. Both of you are. I should have told you where I was going." He rubbed the back of his neck and half-smiled. "It went about how you'd expect and, no, they hadn't seen him. They remembered him, though." The smile turned almost wistful. "They always did."

Natasha looked away. "The last woman you talked to."

"Alice," Steve supplied.

"She called someone after you left."


End file.
